White Privilege Series- Oil Paintings 2018 and ongoing
“Beach Holiday 1966 Transkei”, portrays a South African holiday scene from childhood, recording a 60’s moment in time, when white English women and local black Xhosa people meet on a Transkei beach. Local Xhosa women and a couple of young men in traditional beads and ochre clothing, have crossed the lagoon through dense Transkei bush to collect mussels off the rocks, while scantily clad white women sunbathe, take photos and stroll in the sun. There is a sense of familial commonality in both the groups with their children. A white infant is naked and exposed, crawling across the sand towards a yellow plastic spade while a black infant is transported snugly asleep over the rocks in a traditional manner on its mother’s back. A juxtaposition is created between the holiday play paraphernalia of a white child’s pink holiday hat, towels and colourful beach buckets, and the black women’s earth coloured traditional headdresses, and zinc work buckets and tools carried for harvesting mussels. The two groups meet in the middle, their figures casting similar and long shadows in the sand, as the mussel pickers trade their catch.